


See No Evil

by KL_Morgan



Category: The Village (2004)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-20
Updated: 2006-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 05:07:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1633142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KL_Morgan/pseuds/KL_Morgan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ivy in puzzle pieces.</p>
            </blockquote>





	See No Evil

**Author's Note:**

> Written for River, who asked for "anything" on THE VILLAGE, so I wrote down all I could think of.

 

 

She is not quite eleven when she catches the fever. Kitty is sick as well, and for a time it is not so bad. They stay in bed all day instead of doing chores, which at first is fun but quickly becomes worse than the slowest of school days, restless under the covers with nothing to do but watch clouds pass over the sunny blue sky. Mother reads to them, or tells made-up stories, but she has work to do and for the most part it is the two of them together, making faces to see who will laugh first.

Her sister is better within a week, which Ivy feels deeply unfair and resents horribly. She cries a little when she is alone, pitying herself and weaving elaborate daydreams in which it rains for days, water seeping in under the doors and pouring in through the windows until the flames that are burning her skin are finally put out. By this time her throat has caught fire as well; she tosses and turns from the heat, but swallowing the water her family brings is a worse hurt than the fever alone. Then she becomes sicker -- she throws up anything they feed her, her head pounds and aches for hours. Her skin prickles and pinks and blisters, as if she's a vegetable roasting on a spit. She shares this thought with her father when he comes home, but he does not laugh as wished -- instead he holds her hand, and smiles as if his mouth is hurting. She ends up crying again. This time because she wanted him to laugh, because no one laughs around her anymore, they're all whispers and worried eyes and the only other child allowed to visit her is Kitty. And because she is so tired. She is tired all the time now.

She remains tired even after the fever breaks. She stays in bed for weeks, and then months. When she is well enough to be moved they bundle her into new blankets and a different nightgown, and Father holds her in his lap as they rock on the porch and he explains that they had to burn the old things. Not just the bedclothes and nightgown but all her clothes, and even her few toys. She asks if they burnt her Susanna doll that Mrs. Clack made for her out of quilting scraps and a dried corn husk, and he says yes. He tells her about the Vikings and their funeral pyres, and says that Mother wrapped Susanna in a blue shawl with yellow daisies on it so as to be a proper burial. She is still sad, but he tells her they had to burn all of Kitty's things, too, which goes a way towards making her feel better.

He explains all of this, and describes the leaping flames for her delight, because by now the creeping darkness that came with the fever has covered her eyes completely. It was when she complained of the shadows at the edge of her vision that the whispers started -- she heard them talk of fever, and of _scarlet_ , and wondered that she did not know the word. Kitty tells her it is a color, and Ivy assumes it will be the color she sees against her eyes when there is nothing else. But there is only murky darkness. Disappointed, she asks her father why this is, and when she might see scarlet. He is silent, still rocking her in the chair on the porch, until tells her it is a name for the bad color, and she finally understands.

______________________________________

"Are you going to tell him the truth?"

Ivy pauses in the middle of wringing out newly-washed bandages, kneeling on the porch of the Hunt house. There is a bucket full of them beside her, and her fingers feel to smooth out each length before hanging it on one of the rough lines she has strung up between two posts. "He is not awake, yet," she says.

"Victor says he is out of danger."

"That is true," she replies evenly. "But he sleeps a lot. Almost constantly. They said his body must rest in order to fight infection."

"He will wake up one day," he father persists. From the direction of his voice she can tell he was not stepped onto the porch, but speaks to her from the ground below. "Will you tell him then?"

She reaches into the bucket for another bandage, but instead lets her hand rest against them, slick and damp. "Why shouldn't I?"

"You know what he will do."

This time she doesn't answer, only pulls out several bandages and wrings them with unnecessary violence.

"He would travel to the towns himself. The consequences might undo us all."

"I went to the towns," she says. "What dire consequences have there been? I have brought back medicines and kept the secret of Those We Don't Speak Of." She snaps a piece of fabric to its full width, hearing the cloth slap against the cold air. "Now Lucius will recover and everything will be _fine_."

"You were protected from the full truth of our actions. There were variables... revelations you were spared from witnessing. Lucius would not be protected. You must be the one to do that."

Her throat closes. She can feel her mouth twisting in disappointment as she struggles to respond. "Are you telling me to lie to him?"

"I am asking you."

"Father, I..." She turns her head towards his voice. "How can you ask that? It is base deceit, and you have always told me --" It becomes too much, all at once. She slumps forward, shoulders bowed, hands pressed into the sanded wooden planks of the porch.

"It is something you must consider, daughter," he continues, relentless. "You know a secret. Now you must decide whether to share it with the one you love, or bury it deep within yourself."

______________________________________

It is not long before she discovers the Secret.

Blindness does not make her afraid or unhappy. She was never fearful of the dark, and now would be a foolish time to start. And even as she learns this new way of life, there are people around to catch her when she trips or steer her away from sharp corners. She strives to not need them, and gradually they no longer keep one eye on her at all times, but the knowledge of their love, the touch of gentle hands to turn her away from trouble, keeps her from falling into sadness or self-pity.

So she sets her mouth and learns quickly. She can remember the rooms of her house easily enough, but furniture is moved and everyday obstacles placed in her way: a knitting basket, a bundle of firewood, a new toy.

Outside is worse. There is the sense exposure, of knowing that any wrong turn or slip could end with her walking in circles, lost within the very clearing she has spent her entire life. She knows in her head it could never happen, that there would always be someone to rescue her. But her heart does not believe it, and for a long time she wakes up from a dream of having stumbled into Covington Woods, only knowing where she is when she feels the breath of a monster on her neck.

It takes months of stubbed toes and nightmares before she learns to be still and listen. She begins to pay attention to small things, small noises, and she works to remember what they tell her about where someone is or what they have just set down. She devises systems -- so many steps to this place, so many steps to another. Eventually she becomes comfortable with listening to the world instead of seeing it. And that's when she hears the voices.

Not real voices. Not the ones raised in blessing or song or recitation almost every hour of each day. These voices do not come from human throats, and they do not speak in human words. But they exist: in a sudden change of breathing, an involuntary sound, the awkward shift of feet upon the floor. These are voices as well.

The Secret is that, if you listen hard enough, a person will go on sharing wondrous things about themselves long after they have finished talking.

Ivy loves this. She listens to all these complimenting, contradicting voices and she laughs in the middle of her own silences. It is like magic -- she knows who is lying, who loves, who has already left the conversation and best of all, who is keeping other secrets. She grows better and better at hearing these voices, careful to listen for new clues, to collect more pieces of the curious puzzle that is every man, woman, and child in their village. She thought she knew them before -- had known them all her life, and no one else. But she had never really listened to what they were saying.

She crawls into Kitty's bed one night and tells her about the Secret, and the many tiny secrets it has revealed in turn: that Mary Crane is being cold to Beatrice Phillips because their mothers are fighting, Gerald Hutton is only pretending to be poorly so that his wife won't nag, and that Kitty was with Jamison Sutter right before dinner, wasn't she, and he is going to kiss her soon if he hasn't already. She's so pleased with herself she barely notices how still Kitty has become, until her sister sits straight up in bed.

"Ivy Walker," Kitty asks, a little scolding and a little scared, "are you a witch?"

This is the end of sharing the Secret.

So she stops answering questions that haven't truly been asked, she tries to remember the words she hears in their voices instead of in the rustle of clothing or an unguarded touch. She still listens, of course, but she keeps the laughter inside.

Except with Noah Percy, who would not care if she _were_ a witch.

And one other person.

Around _him_ Ivy babbles like a child (but she is not a child, no matter what Kitty says, and Father assures her she is very grown for her age) and answers his silences without thinking. She cannot help herself. She wants him to know everything about her, and this same eagerness presses her to prove how much she has observed about him.

Ivy cannot think of a time she was not in love with Lucius Hunt.

______________________________________

The meeting house is warm. They must have lit the fire hours ago and been talking amongst themselves before asking her inside. She stands before them, hands clenching and relaxing, waiting for what they have to say.

"You have done a brave thing, Ivy Walker," Mr. Sowers says.

She hesitates, and then: "So you are not... angry, at my father? For telling me the truth?"

"We were surprised," Mr. Sowers says hastily, adding in a murmur: "We were very surprised."

"But... given the circumstances --"

"Yes, extraordinary circumstances," Mrs. Rusk interjects.

"-- we cannot help but conclude that it was the right thing, after all."

"Mrs. Percy?" She turns her head towards the obvious spot of quiet amidst all other nervous movement. "Mr. Percy?"

A small, work-roughened hand reaches out to catch hers -- Mrs. Percy, who loved Ivy for loving her son. But the older woman does not speak, and when Ivy puts her other hand out, tentatively, she touches the tears on her neighbor's face.

"We understand what happened, Ivy," Mr. Percy speaks, his voice as rough as his wife's hands. "We don't blame you."

"We blame ourselves," someone says softly, but Ivy cannot tell who.

"There is a new question on the table, now." Mrs. Hunt sounds like another person entirely, exhausted and worn thin from endless days and nights spent at her son's bedside. This is the first time Ivy has known her to leave his room, which is a good sign. "A question of legacy, if you would."

Ivy starts. "Legacy? I don't understand."

"We were angry when your father told us what he had done," Mrs. Clack says. "But as he pointed has out, none of us are immortal. If this place is to continue the burden must be passed onto the shoulders of others."

"Others who love this village as we do, who care for the welfare of its people," Mr. Nicholson says.

"It is too much for one person to endure, we know. But perhaps... perhaps two people, who had shown their courage and dedication... perhaps if they took up this task, eventually they would find others worth sharing it with."

She realizes with she can hear Kevin in their voices -- just a little, just around the edges, in the way they shape their words and frame their sentences. She recognizes the sharp vowels, the beat-too-slow delivery for what it is: an echo of the towns. They might have sounded like the man who helped her, once, and spoke like he did. Perhaps they knew his family. Perhaps if she said his name they would know it, would ask about the people they left behind.

"Did you hear us, Ivy?"

She hears them. They shift in their chairs. They clear their throats. Skirts rustle. Knitting needles click together, not employed but gripped in idle hands. Mr. Ruston is jiggling his leg. And they are asking her, over and over and over: _Have we done what was necessary? Were we right in our decision? Have our lies become myth become life, or are they still just despicable lies?_

Ivy has no way to answer them.

______________________________________

No, she reflects, she was never careful around Noah Percy. She never needed to be. He knew the Secret as well, and spoke in that other voice more easily than in his real one. What he could not find words for, what his mind could not pause and take time to phrase in calm, even speech Ivy heard in his gentleness, his unexpected laugh.

After she had found what he'd left of Lucius, after the shock had passed, she had been possessed by a mindless anger. Not just for what Noah had done. But that he'd had yet another voice inside him, and she'd never heard. She had wanted to tear him apart and search for that other voice, drag it into the light and out into the open for all to see. So that it would never catch anyone else unwary, ever again.

It is days after her return before they tell her about the body in the woods.

______________________________________

He walks with a cane now, so Ivy leaves hers behind and folds her hand into his. The cane is not permanent, or so the doctor thinks. It is only an assistance until his body can bear its own weight. Between then and now there are exercises: sitting up, laying down, lifting one leg, folding the other against his chest. The doctor promises these strengthen the damaged and underused muscles and help progress the healing. But then Lucius tells him quietly that he prefers the exercise taken from walks around the village. So the doctor orders Ivy to come by at least once a day -- for company, he says with a smile in his voice, and because a young man heals faster before Love's eyes -- for just that purpose. She arrives with a train of followers these days; the children hang on her, cling to her skirts and pull at her hand as they beg to carry something of hers or be carried in turn. It is a full ten minutes, and takes the formative powers of Mrs. Clack and Alice Hunt together, before they have all been detached and she is free to be with her sweetheart.

The air outside is crisp, carrying the bitter taste of midwinter snows that have yet to fall. Freezing autumn rains passed into an arid season with shivering winds, the ground now frozen solid beneath their feet. But there is the unmistakable promise of worse to come.

"Why do they look at you like that?" Lucius asks. He hesitates, almost stumbling on the path. "What I mean to say is -- the children. Their eyes... are different. When they look at you."

"Are they?" she asks, tucking her hair behind her ear.

"Yes." He leads her to Resting Rock -- it is their favorite place still, despite everything. And sometimes because of everything. They should not, she thinks to herself, abandon the memories of what has brought them to this point. That would be a betrayal even deeper than the one they have already suffered. "They stare at you."

"Oh." The rocks are too cold to sit on comfortably, but they stand in a place where they are sheltered from the worst of the wind. "I suspect that is because of what I did, of course. It has become its own story. I do not know who started it."

"What is the name of the story?" he asks, running his fingers over hers.

"The Girl Who Dared. It's nonsense, I know. But they won't stop."

There is silence for a long moment, and she wonders where he is looking.

"How did you know, then," he says finally, "that I did not -- that when I was _not_ doing something, it was because I did not want others to _know_ I wanted to do it?"

Some day she will explain the Secret. Until then she speaks as lightly as she can. "In part because you never neglected anyone as you had begun to neglect me. It was very unfair."

His hands seize her shoulders, thumbs splayed against her collarbone. "Ivy... if it were anyone else, I would know what to say. I would know what needed to be done." There's a hitch in his voice, as if every breath, every time he speaks is a struggle, but he forges on. "I know what must be done, what must be considered, even now. But I am weak and I..."

Gently touching his cheek, his mouth, as if she could read his thoughts with her fingertips. "Lucius?"

"I care for you too much," he whispers, head bowed so that the hard curve of his forehead touches hers. "I have said it before: you are the only one who makes me feel such fear."

Ivy realizes what he is trying to say.

She wants yell at him, scream, even hit. He doesn't know -- cannot know -- what it was like, what she went through. She wishes she could burst into tears and tell him how the woods were never the worst part, not when Finton Coin left her, not when the darkness had movement to chase her, not even when she was running home so fast she thought her lungs would burst, terrified she was still too slow.

At least then she had been doing something. She had been running, climbing, _fighting_. Once over the wall she was at the mercy of others, pleading with her hands outstretched, heart laid bare. Standing on ground that... she had knelt down to feel it, so rough and hard, it scraped against her fingertips unforgivingly. Alone but for a man who spoke to her with speech that was so strange, rough and somehow slurred, and she had to strain to understand. Even the wind had been different -- lacking Covington Woods to rustle through, echoing against what must have been empty sky. She'd been so scared. Scared for Lucius. Scared for herself. Feeling for the first time in her life what it meant to be helpless.

"Yes," she speaks through numb lips, feels his hands tighten in shock on her shoulders. "Yes. If you asked it of me, I could do it again."

He wraps his arms around her, drawing her close. She wonders what people will think if they see them, but does not move away. He smells of wood smoke and sweat, and this near she thinks she can still see his color, even as she closes her eyes.

"I don't know if I can," he admits, and she can hear his heart breaking.

______________________________________

Ivy gets the idea at breakfast. It is a day for shearing the sheep, and Father and Mother are down by the pond giving the animals a bath before cutting off their thick warm coats, and Kitty is in charge.

Her mistake, she thinks later, was attempting to include her sister -- sharing her idea with hushed excitement as they washed the breakfast dishes together. Almost before she was finished Kitty seized her hands, spilling soapy water over the edge of the basin as she pulled Ivy to face her, pleading that she _mustn't_ , she _couldn't_ , to put the awful idea out of her head straight away.

Naturally her next course of action is to bolt from the kitchen, through the sitting room -- pausing to grope for a pair of quilting shears their mother is always careful to keep in a mending basket on the windowsill -- and out the door, button-up boots clomping over the porch they are supposed to sweep and down the steps, her sister fast behind her.

"Ivy Elizabeth Walker!" Kitty calls, breathless and anxious. "You would not dare! And be careful with those!"

Ivy laughs, turning her face up toward the early morning sunlight, warm and gentle on her skin. It must, she thinks, be one of the most beautiful days in the history of the world.

"I am faster than you are, Kitty," she calls back, "and I am not afraid to run. I would prefer your help in this, but if you refuse I will do the job myself -- probably botch it, too. You will have to be content with a sister who looks dreadfully lopsided."

"Ooooh, you are so wicked," Kitty frets, only a few feet away. Ivy listens for her footsteps, leaping just when her sister tries to get close. "This isn't a game, you know, and Mother and Father will be very upset when they --" Ivy hears her sister come to a stop, raising her voice as she spies: "Lucius, help me, she's going to --"

"I am going to cut off my hair," Ivy says, making her voice bright and her smile wide as she turns toward the unmistakable cloud of color that is Lucius Hunt. "The braid keeps getting snagged on something or other. It pulls at my head and hurts, and it is entirely too much trouble. I am cutting it off, only my sister wants to stop me."

"Ivy, your hair is so beautiful! It is prettier than mine," Kitty says, in the unguarded way that makes everyone love her, "and to cut it off would be a _shame_. You would not stomp out a beautiful flower, would you? Oh, Ivy, if only you could see --"

"But I cannot," Ivy interrupted. "I cannot see it, and consequently it does not matter how beautiful my hair is to other people. To me it is only a mess to be picked through for knots every morning and tends to end up in my mouth. And however beautiful it may be, it certainly doesn't taste very nice. There's too much of it, it is cold and slimy when washed, and --"

"Lucius, she has Mother's shears and she is going to hurt herself." 

"Oh, yes, I am in terrible danger," Ivy says, laughing. "Sleeping Beauty almost died from the prick of a spinning wheel, so just imagine what could happen if I cut myself on a pair of scissors." She holds the scissors by the closed blades, and taps the handle against her chin in mock reverie. "Who would kiss me awake?"

"You could cut off your _ear_ ," Kitty hisses. "Papa and Mother said I was to be minded! You are not minding!"

"She is barely two years older than me," Ivy confides to Lucius in an aside, "but she acts like it is more. Besides, I think I am old enough to decide for myself, now that I am fifteen. I turned fifteen last month -- we had a special dinner at the schoolhouse in celebration."

"I remember."

"You were invited. Why did you not come?"

"There was work to be done."

"Lucius!" Kitty wails.

"She thinks you will help her because you are the same age," Ivy says. "Well, almost. But I do not think that is fair, to take her side just because she is older, when I am in the right."

"Are you?"

"It is my hair. I should do with it what I like."

She hears him sigh. "If you took time to braid your more carefully, if would not come loose so often." He speaks slowly, and so quietly his words are almost lost in the whisper of the surrounding trees. "If you did not run about so, it would not catch on so many branches."

She cannot think of a reply for a minute, and she knows her silence holds revealing questions, if only he knew how to listen for them. Does he think her too wild, then? Does he think she should sit still and quiet like other girls, who do not thrill at plunging headlong into darkness? Does he think she should be different?

She feels the just-there brush of his skin as he tucks his fingers into the metal handles and takes the scissors from her grasp, moving past as if to hand them to Kitty. She only has a moment's warning -- a shift of weight as he lifts the braid away from her neck, Kitty's gasp -- before the blades slice through her hair. It is over almost before it has begun, like a shock through her system; she feels lightheaded, her fingertips buzz. Her skin tingles everywhere the newly-shorn curls swing forward to kiss the edge of her jaw.

He still says nothing. He is leaving as quietly as he arrived -- no doubt back on the track of whatever important business their girlish squabble distracted him from -- when Ivy steps toward his color, holding her palms up.

"Mother will want to cry over it," she says, and she feels him press the length of braid into her hand without actually touching her. As always. As ever.

But perhaps not forever.

She watches his color fade into the ever-present darkness as he walks away. Her sister gulps in a breath before calling out, tears of thwarted passion in her voice: "Lucius Hunt! I will be informing your mother about this!"

______________________________________

"How are you feeling?"

"I am well."

He does not sound well. His chest rattles with each breath, as if something has broken inside. But.

"I am glad." She perches on a chair his mother placed close to the sickbed. They are alone for the first time, after the requisite fussing it took for Mrs. Hunt to be satisfied with the placement of half a dozen feather pillows so that he can sit up in bed.

"Ivy."

"Yes, Lucius?"

"How is it am I not dead?"

She twists her hands together and turns her head down.

"I was struck many times -- many, many times -- with a knife. Mother says I have been in this room for days, drifting in and out of sleep. The medicines they are giving me... I don't know what they are. I've never seen pills that take away pain so well." Then, quieter, but with an intensity that almost frightens her: "Where do they come from, Ivy?"

Her heart feels like a bird, wings beating wildly against the confines of her breast. "I brought them," she says, head still bowed. "I asked permission to travel through Covington Woods. Permission was granted." She draws a deep, steadying breath. "I went to the towns with a list of medicines. I traded something of value for them and --"

She did not think he was this strong yet, but he catches her wrists and pulls her to him so swiftly she does not even think to resist. She ends up half in the bed, feet on the floor but fallen against Lucius' chest, and he has wrapped his arms so securely around her shoulders it seems that for all intents and purposes he means to keep her there.

"Did you meet the creatures?" he asks, voice hard.

"Lucius, I'm fine."

"Did you?"

She tries to sit up, but his hold only tightens. "Yes. One."

"Did it let you pass?"

"No. It... it tried to stop me. I killed it. I escaped."

The sound of his harsh breathing fills the room. Her mouth has gone dry, and she has to lick her lips twice before she can speak again: "I am unhurt."

"Do not."

"I wanted to go. I needed to; I would have died without --"

"Do _not_."

She squirms then, just a little. "Lucius, you're hurting me."

His arms loosen. She has enough space to raise her head, and when she discovers that he is crying, each sob as ragged and reluctant as his speech. She shifts closer, carefully placing her arms around his neck and tucking her head into the curve of his shoulder, ignoring whatever tears drip down to wet the nightshirt beneath her cheek.

"It is past," she promises. She hides that her hands are shaking by tangling her fingers in his hair. "It is all in the past."

 

 

 


End file.
